Kapil Sibal, the new minister for human resource development, has his first task cut out for him. He acquires a portfolio so ill-served by his predecessors and one that has such a critical bearing on India realising its social and political aspirations that he must hit the ground running.

The HRD minister needs to bring about a new policy framework for higher education in India. Thousands of young Indians, unable to find a decent university education in India, are flocking to universities abroad. Of the multitude of students coming out of schools, a substantial fraction want a university education. The license raj in university education has stalled the growth in university seats of even a minimum acceptable quality. The affluent struggle to find the money to send their children to study abroad, and the poor struggle to access the 10,000 seats at the Indian Institutes of Technology. Sibal’s focus must be to create a policy framework whereby a large number of high quality universities spring up.

The existing framework for running universities in India has been tried for many decades, and has been shown to have failed. In striking contrast, China has been able to get far ahead of India in building universities. If progress has to be made in India, every assumption of the HRD ministry now needs to be questioned. In addition to removing entry barriers against new private or foreign universities, the four new ideas that need to be brought in are: autonomy of universities (including on budget); reduced core funding combined with more competitive research grants; a flexible salary structure; end of government interference in recruitment of staff and students.

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